Invisible Borders

National borders are entrenched yet porous political divisions that we create and become inseparable from notions of inclusion and exclusion, identity and belonging, us and them. We perceive borders as critical to our sense of self and security yet these abstractions are neither fixed nor permanent. In fact, once upon a time, not too long ago, they were nonexistent. Invisible Borders is a collaboration with Dutch artist Tineke van Veen that explores the duality of a new condition in Europe – the simultaneous dissolution of land borders and their expansion beyond the continent through technologies of control – and questions the value of land borders at all. In a time of borderless Internet, lopsided demographic and ecological development, and escalating border conflicts, to hold up divisions makes less and less sense. Wouldn’t a freer flow of people, like we once had, be in all of our interest?